


siempre

by vlieger



Series: old footie fic rewrites [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:24:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vlieger/pseuds/vlieger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he looks at Guti now, he's too much and not enough the boy he was the first time they met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	siempre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [porcelainsimplicity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/porcelainsimplicity/gifts).



It's become a routine, whenever he sees Guti's hands knotted in his lap and his eyes far away, for Raúl to settle beside him and wrap an arm around his shoulder, pull him into his side and press their cheeks together, rough three-day stubble scraping like sandpaper.

Every time, he sighs and says, "You don't have to, you know."

Every time, Raúl smiles and says, "I want to."

Guti rolls his eyes but leans a little closer, and Raúl's arm tightens, and they wait.

 

Sometimes he wonders why Guti says it, _you don't have to_ , every time without fail, knowing what Raúl's answer is going to be, what it always is. He thinks maybe it's the added reassurance.

It seems to work, anyway, the comfort of his body and no words, and Guti smiles again eventually, just for Raúl, pulling at the corners of his mouth and eyes, soft and familiar.

Raúl aches a little when he smiles like that. He wants to brush the hair from Guti's forehead and tell him, _siempre, siempre_ , but instead he returns the smile and elbows Guti between the ribs as they make their way onto the pitch, because it draws out his wolfish grin, the beautiful savagery of his game that still takes Raúl's breath away on the field, always will.

The sunlight still reflects off his hair the way it did when they were fifteen, complementing his smile and his rough knees and elbows, his inch-perfect passes.

 

When he's feeling particularly old and nostalgic, Raúl turns his head to whisper against Guti's temple, stirring the feathery strands of his hair, "I wish you'd smile more often, amor."

Guti laughs and says, "I wish you would too, old man."

Raúl blinks. "Don't I?"

Guti doesn't answer. Raúl slides his mouth down to his neck, feels his pulse against his lips.

 

When he looks at Guti now, he's too much and not enough the boy he was the first time they met. He thinks that maybe this is what getting old feels like: wishing ghosts back into existence, unsure what to do with the things you've wound up with. The painful juxtaposition of how you thought things would turn out, and how they actually have. The way his life now is familiar but also strange and a little surreal, like the patchy memory of a dream after waking. Everything is still recognisable in this reality, but like those dreams it's thrown together in ways he never imagined in his youthful consciousness, startling and unsettling and a little bit terrifying.

Then, Guti was all tousled blonde hair and bones growing too fast for his skin, set against a raging sea of uneven grass and teenagers in too-big kits. Then, Raúl had noticed the thinness of his wrists and the determined, almost feral glint in his eyes. As time wore on he saw that the thinness of his wrists was matched by the slim precision of his hipbones as they sailed along his torso, jutting through his skin like a boat through water. Now, he still has that hair and those wrists and hipbones, the feral glint in his eyes, but he also has lines creasing his skin like worn-out paper, a desperate edge to his smile, a weary dullness that washes out his gaze too often.

Then, Raúl had slid his fingers over those hips, softened the glint in his eyes with his hands and his mouth. Guti had wound a shaking, tentative arm around his waist, and when Raúl kissed him he kissed back. Now there's nothing tentative in his touch, and his eyes are hard when they fuck.

He still, always, kisses back.

Raúl is more grateful for this than he knows how to say.

It's always nice to have something familiar and unchanged in a place you don't really know.

 

When they have time to themselves they go places no one will recognise them, somewhere quiet and peaceful they can sit like the old friends they are and forget they're also footballers with increasingly uncertain futures. It's the strangest thing about their profession, Raúl thinks: the way it's less and less concrete the older you get. When they were kids their lives were all mapped out. There was nothing to wonder or worry about, because they knew where they'd end up.

Or well, where they thought they'd end up.

It was the same thing, then. Getting older is what makes you realise it actually isn't.

Now, the years ahead are a mystery, and it's not the way most people's lives work. Like ageing backwards, or time moving in reverse in the cruelest of ways, because they have their uncertain futures but none of the youth or energy that should come with it.

Like solid cement slowly receding back into a thick pile of useless sludge.

Raúl blinks out of his thoughts and notices that Guti's doing it again, the faraway eyes, and Raúl gets it, he does, feels it reflected still, lingering, on his own face.

He finds Guti's hand and presses their palms together, squeezes, leaning into Guti's shoulder and waiting for Guti to sink against his side and his eyes to refocus. 

It's nicer then, looking out at the world and pretending for a moment that it's just the two of them, here, leaning on each other not because they have to, but because they want to.

 

When they get home they fuck, Guti's legs hitched around Raúl's waist as Raúl thrusts into him, rough and messy like they sometimes still are, Guti's head thrown back and his eyes closed, nails digging marks into Raúl's shoulders. He's beautiful, still, desperate here in a way Raúl likes, clawing for nothing more than release, and release Raúl can give him.

Afterwards, Raúl brushes the hair from his forehead and whispers, "Siempre, siempre."


End file.
